Just finished my first AP shoot. You may remember me, I was planning on putting my Aiptek PenCam in my Wattage F-22. Well, to make a long story short, I did, and it worked great. After removing the weight used to balance the plane, installing the cam, I was only one ounce heavier than before. The only difference when flying was that it came in on final approach a little faster. Here are a few pics taken from my first AP flight with the Raptor.

NICE PICS Slopedog. Yeah, thats the field I fly in, in the upper right corner of your first pic. Coincidently, in that same pic, the office building in the bottom left, with the big empty parking lot, used to be the place where I worked. (we are now locateed in San Anselmo)

I fly in that field almost every day, monday through fri at 8am. There are also a couple of us that meet sat mornings around 8am and fly till 9 or 9:30 (or until the baseball teams show up...) Come on down, we would love another flier to join us. Best part is, that we actually have permission from the city to fly there, so we don't have to worry about being asked to leave. (cleared through the Parks and Rec department, police and fire department)

Anyway, where did you fly from when getting those shots of the Bay? I'd love to get some like that.

Interesting stuff guys ! I'm wondering if it would be appropriate and if you would be interested in hearing about a project I'm involved with using fixed & rotary wings with onboard cameras downlinking to ground stations to enable counter drug operations - to track and nab the bad guys. This is an UNclassified g-to-g project so no one needs to be shot if the news gets out into the public domain. The 1st Phase 1 was successfully completed in late April 2006 and the 2nd Phase 2 will start end May 2006. MalcolmL

Thanks Slopedog for your response. I omitted to explain that the project I'm involved with is non-commercial as far as I'm concerned, ie., I offer my own time and little expertise I have for free. As to the equipment being used - aircraft, radios, cameras, computers etc etc etc (and civilian others involved) - I'm unable to say what is the basis the companies supplying them have with the project leaders. This is beyond my remit.

To give some insight into the project, we are using fixed and rotary wing model aircraft in conjunction with ground based remote operable cameras to test for surveillance and invigilation viability with a view to tracking and then apprehension of villains running drugs over land or water. Therefore, as this is not AP per se, I was uncertain if this aspect of the project was of interest to the AP community and hence my initial post.

My purpose in contacting the AP group of RCGroups is ( I hope ) to exchange notes and information which may 1/ benefit the overall feasibility of the project and 2/ be of interest to RCGroups AP radio control flyers.

If there is sufficient interest from the AP group, I'd be glad to post more details.